Intellectual and self-indulgent meditations on feminism and femininity.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Porn, Sex, Intimacy, and the Failure of Youporn

My first
semi-interaction with porn was when one of my best friends in middle
school informed me that her boyfriend would regularly go watch porn with
his friends at one of his friend's houses (it was his dad's porn). She
thought it was really weird. I, not dating the guy, and already
indirectly exposed to my dad's porn collection, didn't think much of it.
It was like a rite of passage for them.Later on, I questioned my boyfriend about this whole group of guys
watching porn together phenomenon. Even though he's not homophobic, he
thought it was a bit like the "locker room" phenomenon and therefore a
bit gay--a bunch of guys watching porn together. On the other hand, my
boyfriend has been kicked out of the "dude" club for not approving of
guys talking about the graphic sex they would have with their
co-workers/acquaintances.

My first direct interaction with porn . . . was through manga.
There's quite a bit of soft-core (soft-core in that the penis is
censored out) manga porn. They vary in their level of plot, realism (but
very little manga is realistic anyway), and humiliation of the female
(a common theme--usually the girl is so ashamed of being turned
on--sometimes because the guy is a jerk--that she can't even bear to
look at herself in the mirror).

In the meantime I was taking a psychology course on human sexuality,
which covered, among other things, bonobo sexual habits, sexual
therapy, viagra, pedophilia, molestation, transgender people, and porn. I
came out of that class undecided about porn's role, except that
Christian fundamentalist emergency hotline workers were crazy for
focusing on husband's porn habits when there were so many other issues
in a relationship. I view excessive porn usage as an effect of a
dysfunctional marriage, not (necessarily) its cause. It's not even sure
that the porn usage was excessive.

Note:I know someone who used to work for a porn company, the same one
that later got sued for distributing videos of Pamela Anderson. His job
mostly involved answering the telephone, including telling grandmothers
and minister's wives what these mysterious charges were on their
grandson's/husband's credit card. For the grandson viewing gay porn, he
said they were an entertainment website. For the minister's wife, he was
honest to the point of pointing out that just because the porn was
being accessed by the church's computer didn't mean that her husband
wasn't culpable.

There are also crazy husbands who view their wives' masturbation as
cheating. Obviously I'm more liberal than that, but at the risk of
sounding like a fundamentalist Christian, I don't think porn's role in
society is harmless. There are two types of feminists. The ones who
believe that women should be sexually liberated (as in we should imitate the
sexual appetites and tastes of men) and those who think that porn
objectifies women. I slant more toward the latter. What if I don't want
to imitate the sexual appetites and tastes of men? There's a reason why
the sex industry has failed to attract a female following. (Apparently a
lot of people, involving women, have worked on this.) I think the reason for failure was trying to follow the same formula as
porn for men.

There is a huge industry in female-audience porn. It's called the
romance novel industry. I've read a few by Danielle Steele and Nora
Ephron (whom I suspect might be the "higher-end" writers). The plots are
sometimes contrived, especially the sexual tension and male dominance
over females, but I have to admit they're not bad writers. Why do these
novels succeed when video porn fails? Probably the semblance of a plot.
More importantly, there's supposed to be emotion and even intimacy in
romance novels, two things noticeably absent in video porn.

My first real interaction with "real" porn was in a hotel in
Taichung. While
flipping through the channels, my boyfriend discovered that we had free
porn--at least three channels of it. One was the weird Japanese porn
where the vagina is pixelated out, but the other ones were English
language and everything. We watched it. We touched each other. We
started having sex. We turned off the TV.

So porn can be sex positive even in a real relationship. My favorite
moment of watching porn with my boyfriend though? We were watching an
unusually plot heavy movie (although it didn't make sense and ultimately
went unresolved).

My favorite sex scene was between the protagonist's
best friend/editor and her (own) boyfriend. It had been mentioned before
that he was a guy who spontaneously did sweet things for her (to
the protagonist's displeasure--I seriously thought she had a thing for
her friend's boyfriend for awhile--oh the wasted plotline!). Their sex
scene was oddly intimate. I mentioned to my boyfriend that the actors
actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.

However, my favorite moment
was when the protagonist had an argument with her editor friend about
how the editor didn't know how hard it was to find love because she had a
great boyfriend. The editor then talked about how tired she was of her
friend being bitter about the editor's great relationship, and how hard
it was for the editor to see her friend get into shitty relationship
after shitty relationship with douchebags. It was a revelation. That's
what I was (am) going through with one of my friends!

Flashback: My first interaction with video porn came after reading
about youporn in a magazine while waiting in a doctor's office (the same
way I discovered Hulu). A woman wrote a positive view of it, saying
that it was a realistic depiction of real sex, unwaxed vaginas and
interruptions by crying babies and all. I searched it, confirmed I was
over 18, and watched. In the beginning I watched some nice videos,
devoid of position changing, cock shots, cum shots, or even people's
faces. There was one interracial couple where the female (on top) seemed
genuinely affectionate. I guess the male was too, because he was
constantly stroking her hair. Their sex was brief and ended with little
fanfare or vocalization, but some kissing. Later on I watched a married
couple have sex. The video included the wife venting her frustration
from the day and complimenting her husband on making the bed nice as he
actively listened and stroked her clitoris. Eventually he mentioned that
she was already wet, but he went to go fetch a stool that they
frequently used in their sexual interactions, as well as some lubricant.
She reversed cowboyed him and attempted to talk dirty, but it was clear
that she was unused to it and laughed at herself.

There were other, sexier videos (though less intimate), but
eventually youporn got inundated by amateur porn artists, illegal
uploads of professional porn, and women showing how they could put
baseball bats up their vaginas. I watched a couple of "documentary" type
porn videos, showing real married couples having sex. They were
interviewed beforehand on how they met and what they liked about each
other, and then on to the sex! It was still boring. First I suck on my
wife's nipple, and then she sucks on my cock, etc., etc. It seemed
mechanical.

Perhaps I was biased against professional porn, seeing how I
had mostly seen amateur versions of it. I assumed that professional porn
would be just as mechanical and boring. Most of it was. Besides the sex
scene with the editor friend and her boyfriend, most of the sex scenes,
even in that particular movie, seemed like people just going through
the motions. Even the penultimate sex scene, where the protagonists
finally (actually) gets together with her paramour was boring. I told my
boyfriend I was disappointed. There was no passion, no intimacy, no
indication that these two people actually liked each other. Sure, maybe
sex gets boring after you've been doing it for hours (on Cialis), but
these were supposed to be professionals!

Another reason video porn may not appeal to females is that, well,
the camera is focusing on the wrong things. For one thing, I personally
find most porn actresses to be unattractive. They're overly tanned,
mostly with beach blond hair, and have breasts (real or more likely
surgery enhanced) that are huge and pushed up to show cleavage through their turtlenecks. I can't imagine looking like these women or even
wanting to look like these women. That's okay, because they're for the
men to look at (and for the men to subconsciously start to holding as a
standard for real women). The men? They're a bit tanned, but I can't
argue with their huge cocks or their cut abs or their tight butts.
Mostly the camera doesn't focus on them though. The camera is much more
interested in viewing the woman from the man's perspective, so as to
simulate the actual experience of having sex with the porn actress.

This is why I complained to my boyfriend that porn is boring. I
don't want to look down at some woman's breasts for twenty minutes. I
suppose it's more interesting for guys because 1) they like breasts and
2) they're supposed to be actively masturbating at this point. As
Penelope Trunk points out, good sex is boring (except, perhaps, if you're the one engaging in it).

That's the (a) woman's perspective on porn. What about guys? I
believe porn is just as bad for men's relationships with women as
romance novels and fairy tales and Disney movies and romantic comedies
are bad for women's relationships with men. They both set unrealstic,
fetishized examples that get more and more extreme as media producers
struggle to distinguish themselves from each other. Sure, sometimes it
can be stylistic and fun, but they have little to do with reality, and
are practically the only reference we have for how things are supposed
to work.

That's why it's too bad that youporn failed. As for romance
novels . . . all romance ends in marriage (or consummation). Once a
relationship has been achieved in a story, all of the tension is gone.
The honeymoon period fades after 6 months to a year. What is there to
talk about then? Just as porn doesn't want to film women who aren't
actively screaming or talking dirty, romance novelists don't want to
record negotiating with your boyfriend about whose turn it is to wash
the dishes. Yet demure sex and daily chores make up an important part of
a relationship. It you don't have them, your relationship is probably
on some kind of artificial steroidal high.

A recent article in New York Magazine talked about how porn may
be causing some guys to "fake it" in order to compete with porn's
standard. Woman have been doing that for ages. Sure, to do
otherwise may be awkward, but it would also elicit an actual discussion
about what could have been better--you know, intimacy? (though you may
not want to have that intimate discussion with a one-night stand you
picked up from a Broadway show). Porn may also lead men to have less
interest in their actual wives/girlfriends (more on that later). It may
also lead to imitation from women which, ironically, freaks men out.

So are fundamentalist Christians right? Does porn interfere with a man's
relationship with his woman? Is it cheating? Maybe. Porn can become an
addiction, and women aren't fond of their men having addictions (to
sports, video games, work, drugs, etc.). Men don't like it when their
women have addictions either (to shopping . . . etc.). Porn can
be a problem if it interferes with or starts to become a replacement for
a relationship. One man in the article turned porn into a very
engrossing hobby that he prepped for. Another man used porn to aid sex
with his wife. Neither of these relationships seem healthy to me.

Porn can become dangerous simply from a behaviorism point of view. Man
watches porn (i.e. masturbates to it). Man receives positive
reinforcement--not just in the release of semen, but in the release of
oxytocin which leads to an emotional attachment with the porn. Man
starts to watch more porn. Unfortunately things aren't so
straightforward in actual sex. Sometimes the woman is tired or grumpy or
angry at you or just not into it. Sometimes she doesn't cum. Sometimes
she's been nagging at you to pick up your brown socks (though I don't
know if men withhold sex as emotional blackmail the way women seem to
do, it makes sense that if you're upset with a person, you're less
likely to want to have sex with them, unless you're one of those people
who view sex as an act of violence and domination). Sex in an actual
relationship is not as reliable (though a bit more reliable than
hook-ups) or instant gratification centric as porn. Get used to it,
guys.